Meet Kristina Villa

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristina Villa.

Hi Kristina, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I live in Middle Tennessee on the traditional lands of the Cherokee, Chocktaw, and Shawnee people. My partner and I have a farming business called Villa Acres where we grow vegetables using organic and biodynamic methods, and we have a small micro raw dairy. We sell to restaurants, grocery stores, and other CSAs, and we contribute regularly to emergency food relief programs. We don’t own the land we farm on. Most farmers in this country don’t.

I didn’t grow up farming though. I grew up hungry. My family was food-insecure, and most of our food came from food pantries, fast food restaurants, or corner stores. I didn’t see a farm or experience a garden until I was 21 years old.

As a young adult, I was very focused on the food paradigm and the socio-economic state we live in which causes so many obvious disparities in wealth and health among the people and Earth. I volunteered with soup kitchens and fundraised for local food assistance, and noticed immediately that emergency food relief is crucial for the here and now, but that it is not fixing or addressing the systems that are keeping people hungry.

At that same time, I was noticing that while I could now eat anything I wanted from a grocery store, everything there was just an empty shell of food, not containing the nutrition and wholesomeness of food that I knew I craved but didn’t know how to get.

I realized at that time that the most radical way to step outside of the oppressive structures that keep people hungry and unhealthy was to start a garden. That first year, I was shocked at how much food a tiny little garden could put out. I was giving food to the soup kitchens and food pantries I worked with, and still had plenty to eat myself. I also was shocked at the intimacy with nature that the garden gifted me.

At that time, I thought for sure that food was the basis of peace. So I wanted to learn how to grow more.

Way more.

So I moved to the oldest and largest organic farm in TN so that I could learn to farm. I studied, practiced, and learned there for eight years until I felt ready to farm on my own. That is when I learned that the basis of peace is actually land. Trying to secure land access as a young and beginning farmer opened my eyes to the realities, disparities, inequities, and racism of land access, ownership, and tenure in this country, and that is what led me to my work with Agrarian Trust.

Land access is the number one barrier for new, beginning, and historically disadvantaged farmers in this country. 97% of land in the US is owned by white people. 2,000 acres of farmland are lost from agriculture every single day. 37 mid-sized farms close in this country every single day, buckling under the financial burdens of this unsustainable system. Over half of all US farmers are over 65 years old, and often their retirement is tied to the land they own, meaning they have to sell it on the open market to be able to retire. On the open market, land prices have skyrocketed, and usually, it is developers, speculators, investors, or wealthy people who can afford farms, not young farmers.

Agrarian Trust is working nationally to protect farmland and to support next-generation farmers by decommodifying land, placing it in community control, and giving farmers and ranchers 99-year leases that are very minimal in cost. I am the Communications Director for the national trust, serve on several Agrarian Commons boards throughout the country, and am the President of the Middle Tennessee Agrarian Commons.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Agrarian Trust is such a new organization, going beyond the work of other land trusts in this country, to do something radically different than what is typically found in western, colonial culture. So one of the biggest challenges has been the cultural mindset shift needed to begin thinking about and talking about land and people’s relationship to it in a different way. Instead of land being a commodity that is bought and sold, held in private ownership, and extracted and profited from, the land needs to be seen as a resource that needs to be cared for responsibly and for the benefit of those who live in a relationship with it. In our culture, we only know how to talk about having control and power over land as “ownership”, but the unique model of the Agrarian Commons gives farmers and ranchers everything they want out of “ownership” without the burden of the high cost associated with “ownership”.

There are other very real challenges to this work as well, such as the high, prohibitive cost of land.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
You can support the mission and work of Agrarian Trust by subscribing to the newsletter, donating to Agrarian Trust, donating to the current Agrarian Commons fundraise campaigns, donating land into the Agrarian Commons, contacting us about a potential partnership or sponsorship, and following Agrarian.

Trust on your favorite social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.agrariantrust.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agrariantrust/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agrariantrust
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/agrariantrust
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAcjrSkwX5SZSwSJ8Vsb7-A